Will Conservatism Recover?

I agree with the author, in the short term there isn't much conservatism happening in national politics. But there is a lot of conservatism in local politics, and there will eventually be conservatism again on a national level. The principles of conservatism are correct and good and will be returned to. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

Will Conservatism Recover? | National Review

The Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, is an old-school San Francisco progressive who is ruthlessly hostile to most aspects of the American constitutional order, who exhibits no principled opposition to the most radical of her movement’s policy positions, and who has thus far failed to demonstrate that she possesses leadership skills of any sort. At various points in her history, Harris has called for the abolition of private health insurance, for slavery reparations, for the prohibition and confiscation of handguns and modern sporting rifles, for the “Green New Deal,” for defunding the police, for banning fracking, for ending ICE, and for taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for prisoners and illegal immigrants. Elsewhere, she has supported nuking the Senate filibuster, packing the Supreme Court, abolishing the Electoral College, and nationalizing much of the United States’ election system. Aware that the administration she serves is disliked and that she is personally unpopular, Harris has more recently been careful to equivocate on many of these goals. But there is no reason for voters to believe that dissimulation. Harris is weak, ignorant, and lazy, and, like Joe Biden, she will be swiftly captured by her side’s interest groups if she wins the presidency. If she is sworn in next year, she will immediately become the most left-wing commander in chief we’ve had since the Second World War.

The Republican nominee — for the third time in a row, Lord help us! — is Donald J. Trump, a capricious, narcissistic old man who tried to steal the 2020 election by rewriting the 1876 Electoral Count Act and the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution, and who is able to run again only because the GOP declined to impeach and convict him for that attempt. On policy, Trump has some advantages over Harris, especially in the realms of illegal immigration and the judiciary, but he is a long, long way from being a conservative, and his egotism, poor discipline, and lack of attention to detail make the prospect of a second term an alarming one. At various points since he lost power, Trump has suggested “suspending” or “terminating” the Constitution, and, unlike most of the judges he appointed, he continues to demonstrate a faulty understanding of the limits imposed on the power of the presidency and of the role of the federal government. If Trump becomes president again next year, he will worsen our civic culture, spread corrosive lies with abandon, and make the work of the country’s constitutionalists more difficult.

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It would be inaccurate to suggest that the 2024 election is about literally nothing, but, certainly, it is about very little that is comprehensible or concrete. Useful plebiscites set two coherent visions against each other. This plebiscite is entirely opportunistic. Like that of Kamala Harris and her Democratic Party, Donald Trump’s approach to this election has been to play Santa Claus for his Americans of choice, without any regard for the consequences of his vows. If he sees a group whose votes he wants to win, he offers that group special treatment. In Las Vegas, Trump has promised that the federal government will no longer tax tips; in Detroit, he has promised that the federal government will offer a deduction on the interest on loans for American-made cars; in New York, he has promised to restore the SALT deduction that his own 2017 tax bill finally managed to limit. Among seniors, he promises that Social Security benefits will be tax-free; among shift workers, he promises that overtime will be excluded from taxation; when addressing firemen, police officers, and the military, he promises to exempt them from taxation completely. When IVF became an issue, he announced that he not only supported its remaining legally available but that taxpayers would foot the bill. Trump has no plan for our endless deficits, he has no interest in reducing the debt, and he is allergic to discussing the entitlement reform that will be necessary to fix both problems. Worst of all, when he is pushed on any of these questions, he asserts either that everything will somehow be magically magnificent or that he will fix each and every problem the country faces by collecting large across-the-board import tariffs. Trump denies reality, avoids unpleasant topics, and acknowledges no trade-offs. As a practical matter, one can make an electoral case for such an approach. One cannot, however, call it conservatism.

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I do not wish to be Pollyannaish. For a conservative classical liberal such as myself, this election season has been alarming and grotesque, and I am convinced that, one way or another, we are destined to pay a price for it. But I do not worry about conservatism in the longer term, because I believe that the central insights of conservatism are correct. Human nature is immutable. The world is a dangerous place. Ambition must be channeled productively. We cannot spend more than we make. There are no solutions, only settlements. Equality under the law is superior to the alternatives. Practice is a better indicator of success than theory. Power corrupts less when it is shared between competing institutions. Government ought to be as close to the people as possible. That which cannot go on forever will stop. From time to time we take a vacation from these truths, but a vacation is all it can be, for, eventually, reality will kick in — yes, even in Washington, D.C.

 

I think he did a good job of covering the high points in that closing paragraph: